programming

Raspberry Pi, Allwinner, and CuBox in the Linux hardware race to tiniest and cheapest

Raspberry Pi

Last month, we put the Raspberry Pi, a tiny $25 Linux computer, in our open source gift guide. It led overwhelmingly as your favorite on the list. But other similar options have been popping up, like the Allwinner A10 ($15) and the CuBox (quite a bit more). » Read more

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How to become an amazing contributor (to an open source project)

It's a busy morning here in New York City. My email inbox is full of pleasant surprises. The first is a patch for one of my open source projects. A second will appear this afternoon. A third should come late at night—or maybe tomorrow–from a new contributor.

Alongside my day job, I contribute and manage open source projects. The number of projects I work on has grown from a couple of small tools to well over a dozen in the last three years. Open source has become a great way to learn new technology, experiment with modern software development practices, and, of course, meet other like-minded engineers. I find that seeing great contributors send working and tested code provides a unique feeling of accomplishment, as powerful as having many satisfied users of my own applications or strong revenues posted by the employer that pays my bills. » Read more

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